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Saturday, 26 July 2014

[Tutorial] Tropical Floral Nails

The weather here in Perth has been rather gloomy recently, so I thought I'd liven up my life a little with some tropical floral nails. I absolutely love this design! I was inspired by @polishpeach on Instagram when I saw her lovely nail art that you can see here. Her choice of a pastel yellow and lighter pink have such a pretty effect, though I personally chose to go a little more tropical with a bright yellow and red.

For this design you will need various colours, a thin paint brush and also a dotting tool (you can also use a toothpick). From left to right the colours I used were OPI 'Big Apple Red', OPI 'Pink Friday', Ulta3 'Honolulu', The Face Shop 'GR502', Sally Hansen 'Mint Sorbet' and Sally Hansen 'Black Out'.

Apply a yellow polish onto your nail until opaque (I used 3 coats).

Use a dotting tool and a stippling effect to draw red flowers onto the yellow polish. Dot red nail polish onto a piece of paper, dip the dotting tool and start by giving the flower 5 petals. From there, shape the flowers until the desired look is achieved.

Use a thin paint brush dipped in pale pink polish to draw V shapes on each petal.

Use a dotting tool dipped in black polish to form a black dot onto the centre of the flower.

Use a dotting tool dipped in yellow polish to form dots at the base of each petal, near the black dot. (This step is optional, depending on if you prefer the look of the flower in step 4 or 5, though I personally feel that the yellow makes the flower much more blended in with the background.)

With the thin paint brush dipped in green polish, draw leaves coming out from the flowers.

Use the paint brush to add detail to the leaves by using a mint green polish.

And this is the finished result! The design can easily be used as an accent nail or if you have enough time and patience, done as a full manicure as below.

The steps to this design may seem quite complex, but I can assure you that it is not too hard to achieve! I'd love to see any recreations of this design by tagging me @nailsbynikkih on Instagram!